With sales in China plummeting, how many Chinese employees will be laid off this time? The Chinese market is still the market for over 60% of Qualcomm's revenue to date. I know there is a big R&D team in the China office, maybe over 2000 engineers? Do we need to keep such a large R&D team there? I mean, given the increasingly confrontational political relationship between the US and China, is it necessary for the company to keep its R&D projects in China? Will they have nothing to do?
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China should anticipate a large reduction. At least half of the lay offs will be in China. This is what happens when the government tells companies they have to do business with government owned Huawei as a matter of national pride.
Why we keep big CE team at US/India where there is no local customer. Remote support East Asia countries customer is low efficent and also have language communication difficulty by nature.
If it is cost reason, then US CE should be eliminated.
R&D in China will be gone for sure. Just look at what other chip companies are doing. Marvell has closed its R&D in China, which had 1000 engineers before.
QC will do whatever it takes to keep the share holders happy. Stock market cannot think more that 6 months into the future. So moving jobs out of high cost regions will sustain the stock price in the short term.
China is not low cost
During our recent all-hands meeting, CA highlighted three significant risks on the horizon. Aside from concerns related to our Apple deal, the other two originate from China. These include the sluggish market recovery and the potential loss of the Huawei business.
Q is reallocating resources in mobile core R&D away from China, opting to move jobs to India. Concurrently, Q is making substantial investments in the Chinese automotive sector. This reflects Q's bold bet on the burgeoning Chinese automotive market, with expectations of witnessing robust year-over-year growth ranging from 30% to 50% in the coming years.
It appears likely that we will witness significant downsizing within China mobile team.
China and QIPL are Low cost regions, so they will have minimal lay offs, only low performers.
USA will take the brunt of it and some EU. EU is harder to lay off in as they have better employee protections but its not impossible.
In the USA they can boot you out right away. USA employees also get paid the most so you kick out 1 sr staff and you can hire 8 borderline useless QIPL engineers.